There we were, ¹  binding sheaves of grain in the middle of the field. Suddenly my sheaf rose up and stood upright and your sheaves surrounded my sheaf and bowed down ²  to it!”

They go about naked, without clothing, and go hungry while they carry the sheaves. ¹ 

Look! I will press you down, like a cart loaded down with grain presses down. ¹ 

which cannot fill the reaper’s hand, or the lap of the one who gathers the grain!

When she got up to gather grain, Boaz told ¹  his male servants, “Let her gather grain even among ²  the bundles! Don’t chase her off! ³ 

The one who weeps as he walks along, carrying his bag ¹  of seed, will certainly come in with a shout of joy, carrying his sheaves of grain. ² 

But they do not know what the Lord is planning; they do not understand his strategy. He has gathered them like stalks of grain to be threshed ¹  at the threshing floor.

She asked, ¹  ‘May I follow the harvesters and gather ²  grain among the bundles?’ ³  Since she arrived she has been working hard ⁴  from this morning until now ⁵  – except for ⁶  sitting ⁷  in the resting hut ⁸  a short time.” ⁹ 

On that day ¹  I will make the leaders of Judah like an igniter ²  among sticks and a burning torch among sheaves, and they will burn up all the surrounding nations right and left. Then the people of Jerusalem will settle once more in their place, the city of Jerusalem.

You will come to your grave in a full age, ¹  As stacks of grain are harvested in their season.

Tell your daughters and neighbors, ‘The Lord says, “The dead bodies of people will lie scattered everywhere like manure scattered on a field. They will lie scattered on the ground like grain that has been cut down but has not been gathered.”’” ¹ 

“If a fire breaks out and spreads ¹  to thorn bushes, ²  so that stacked grain or standing grain or the whole field is consumed, the one who started ³  the fire must surely make restitution.

In those days I saw people in Judah treading winepresses on the Sabbath, bringing in heaps of grain and loading them onto donkeys, along with wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of loads, and bringing them to Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. So I warned them on the day that they sold these provisions.

One day Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go ¹  to the fields so I can gather ²  grain behind whoever permits me to do so.” ³  Naomi ⁴  replied, “You may go, my daughter.”

From that time ¹  when one came expecting a heap of twenty measures, there were only ten; when one came to the wine vat to draw out fifty measures from it, there were only twenty.